We need more pharmacists!

• More community pharmacies will be built throughout the country and with this, more pharmacists will be needed

More community pharmacies will be set up in rural areas. The Health Ministry is looking into a zoning system to distribute pharmacies accordingly in urban and rural areas so that the public would not be deprived of such medical service.

Presently, the concentration of community pharmacies is in Selangor where there are 433 pharmacies. Penang has 213, Kuala Lumpur has 201 and Johor has 157 community pharmacies.

The Health Ministry and the Malaysian Pharmacy Association has also developed the Malaysian Healthcare Providers Mapping Service. Part of the plan is to improve the number of pharmacists to the population in Malaysia from 1:2,974 to 1:2,000 by 2016.

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